The scientists behind 'Inside Out' explain one big thing the movie gets right that most people get wrong

For an animated movie aimed at children, "Inside Out," the latest from Pixar, has received an unusually serious response from adults.

It was "so powerful that it changed the way I understand my own emotions," wrote Business Insider's Ian Phillips.

The movie "made me understand the one thing my therapist has been trying to teach me for 15 years," wrote Caroline Moss. Chris Weller called it "a surprisingly accurate look at human psychology."

Yet all these high-minded responses are perhaps to be expected: It turns out Pixar brought in two of psychology's foremost experts on emotions to serve as scientific consultants on the film.

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The scientists behind 'Inside Out' explain one big thing the movie gets right that most people get wrong

NEW YORK, NY - JUNE 11: Actor Kyle MacLachlan discusses his new film 'Inside Out' at the AOL BUILD Speaker Series at AOL Studios In New York on June 11, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Daniel Zuchnik/WireImage)

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In a column in The New York Times, those experts (Dacher Keltner and Paul Ekman, both of the University of California–Berkeley) explain one thing that the movie gets right that most people get wrong.

They write:

Emotions organize — rather than disrupt — rational thinking. Traditionally, in the history of Western thought, the prevailing view has been that emotions are enemies of rationality and disruptive of cooperative social relations.

But the truth is that emotions guide our perceptions of the world, our memories of the past and even our moral judgments of right and wrong, most typically in ways that enable effective responses to the current situation.

Anger, they note, makes us "acutely attuned to what is unfair, which helps animate actions that remedy injustice."

Indeed, despite the popular perception that thinking and feeling are two separate spheres constantly at odds with each other, the "vital role of emotions in determining decisions" has been recognized by "a growing body of literature," a team of Israeli researchers wrote in 2012.

How does this all play out in "Inside Out"? Keltner and Ekman explain: Sadness "guides Riley to recognize the changes she is going through and what she has lost, which sets the stage for her to develop new facets of her identity."